单选题
The idea that meditation is good for you is certainly not new, but scientists are still trying to figure out exactly why meditating so reliably improves mental and physical health. One old theory is that meditation is just like exercise, it trains the brain as if gray matter were a bundle of muscles. You work those muscles and they get stronger.
A recent paper in the journal Psychological Science tries to identify brain functions that are actually enhanced by meditating. The study shows that intensive meditation can help people focus their attention and sustain it—even during the most boring of tasks. But while participants who meditated were able to pick up visual cues better than a control group, it was not clear whether meditating helped them process the new information in a meaningful way.
The study, which was authored by 13 researchers and led by Katherine MacLean of the University of California, Davis, begins by noting that everyone gets tired after concentrating. It also notes that research going back to the 1970s has established that Buddhist monks who have regularly meditated for years perform better than most of us on concentration tests. In the past five years, other studies have shown that meditation also yields substantial gains in concentration for laypeople who take up the practice.
In the new study, 60 enthusiasts who signed up to attend a three-month meditation retreat were randomized into two groups. That"s an extraordinary commitment to meditation that most of us can"t relate to. (The attendees even paid $5,300 for the privilege of attending the retreats.) But while all the participants were highly willing, the strength of this new study lies in comparing their mental performance before, during and after they began meditative practice.
And the results are clear: it"s not wanting to meditate but actually meditating that improves your brain"s performance. The participants were all asked to watch a series of lines flash on a computer screen and click a mouse when they saw a line that was shorter than the others. It was a boring test, and that was the point: in order to concentrate on those little line changes, they had to focus intently. Those who were meditating at the retreat were significantly more likely than those in the wait-list group to see increasingly small differences in the lines. Their abilities improved as meditative training continued. As the paper puts it, their powers of "visual discrimination" had significantly increased.
This suggests that meditation can help you concentrate. But the study found that while meditators were more accurate, they were not faster, those who had meditated saw differences in the lines more often than those who hadn"t, but they didn"t react any faster than the control group when both saw the same line discrepancies on the screen. That"s important because it suggests that meditation helps your brain do something automatic— process visual stimuli—but not something more complicated, react when it happens.
单选题
In what way is the new study different from previous ones?
【正确答案】
D
【答案解析】[解析] 第一段提到，科学家仍然想弄清楚冥想到底为什么能改进身心健康；第二段第一句也提到，这项新的研究想弄清楚冥想能提高哪方面的大脑功能。第二段第二句紧接着陈述出它的发现，即intensive meditation can help people focus their attention and sustain it(集中冥想有助于人们集中并保持注意力)。
单选题
The participants were so committed to the meditative practice that ______
单选题
Those who practiced meditation are not able to ______
【正确答案】
D
【答案解析】[解析] 根据最后一段，处理视觉刺激(指在计算机屏幕上看出线的长短)，与对它做出反应相比，是一种更简单的、机械的大脑活动，而对它做出反应是一种复杂的活动。这里所谓反应速度，指从辨认出线的长度，到点击鼠标做出反应所占用的时间。因此所谓react when it happens指当辨认出线的长度时做出反应。研究发现，受试者做出反应的速度并不比控制组快。
单选题
If you lose focus, ______
【正确答案】
A
【答案解析】[解析] 这个选择项表达的内容实际上是本文介绍的那项研究的主要结论。对于那些不能集中精力的人来说，通过冥想训练可以帮助人提高注意力，即meditation can help you concentrate(见最后一段第一句)。